"In a provocative analysis of public culture and popular concerns, Jodi Dean examines how serious UFO-logists and their pop-culture counterparts tap into fears, phobias, and conspiracy theories with a deep past and a vivid present in American society. Aliens, the author shows, provide cultural icons through which to access the new conditions of democratic politics at the millennium. Because of the technological complexity of our age, political choices...

"Conversations are one of the most fundamental means of communicating we have as humans. At their best, conversations are unconstrained, authentic and open--two or more people sharing thoughts and ideas in a way that bridges our individual experiences, achieves a common goal. At their worst, they foster misunderstanding, frustration and obscure our real intentions. How often do you walk away from a conversation feeling really heard? That it moved...

"From the author of Irreversible Damage, an investigation into a mental health industry that is harming, not healing, American children In virtually every way that can be measured, Gen Z's mental health is worse than that of previous generations. Youth suicide rates are climbing, antidepressant prescriptions for children are common, and the proliferation of mental health diagnoses has not helped the staggering number of kids who are lonely, lost,...

"The much-anticipated follow up to the groundbreaking anthology Disability Visibility: another revolutionary collection of first-person writing on the joys and challenges of the modern disability experience, and intimacy in all its myriad forms. What is intimacy? More than sex, more than romantic love, the pieces in this stunning and illuminating new anthology offer broader and more inclusive definitions of what it can mean to be intimate with another...

"This work places the modern period (post-1700) at the center of the scholarship on horses as they relate to humans, showing how the horse has remained central to the accelerating culture of modernity. The contributors investigate specific equine cultures--from the performance of social power and the definition of heritage in Europe, Australia, and the Americas, to explorations of the ways horses figure in distinctively modern genres of the self,...

"A collection of short comics about the COVID-19 pandemic. Diverse artists address disruptions in work, school, and family life as well as failures in public policy, racial biases, and systemic inequalities revealed by the pandemic"--

"Gripping narrative non-fiction with STEM and social justice themes that proves cities can be surprisingly wild places--and why understanding urban nature matters. What can city bees tell us about climate change? How are we changing coyote behavior? And what the heck is a science bike? Featuring the work of a diverse group of eleven scientists--herself included!--Dr. Cylita Guy shows how studying urban wildlife can help us make cities around the world...

D. Graham Burnett recovers the strange story of Maurice v. Judd, an 1818 trial that pitted the new sciences of taxonomy against the then-popular--and biblically sanctioned--view that the whale was a fish. The immediate dispute was mundane: whether whale oil was fish oil and therefore subject to state inspection. But the trial fueled a sensational public debate in which nothing less than the order of nature--and how we know it--was at stake. Burnett...

"It's no secret that AI is changing the way we live, work, love, and entertain ourselves. Dating apps are using AI to pick our potential partners. Retailers are using AI to predict our behavior and desires. Rogue actors are using AI to persuade us with Twitter bots and fake news. Companies are using AI to hire us-or not. This is just the beginning. As AI becomes smarter and more humanlike, our societies, our economies, and our humanity will undergo...